done. It's much more important than being admired."

"You could take another ship back," she told him. "It would be worth
more to Dara than the Med Ship is! And then everybody would realize that
you'd planned everything."

"Ah!" said Calhoun. "But you've no idea how much this ship matters to
Dara!"

He seated himself at the controls. He slipped headphones over his ears.
He listened. Very, very carefully, he monitored all the wave-lengths and
wave-forms he could discover in use on Weald. There was no mention of
the oddity of behavior of shiploads of surplus grain aloft. There was no
mention of the ships at all. But there was plenty of mention of Dara,
and blueskins, and of the vicious political fight now going on to see
which political party could promise the most complete protection against
blueskins.

After a full hour of it, Calhoun flipped off his receptor and swung the
Med Ship to an exact, painstakingly precise aim at the sun around which
Dara rolled. He said;

"Overdrive coming, Murgatroyd!"

Murgatroyd grabbed. The stars went out and the universe reeled and the
Med Ship became a sort of cosmos all its own.

Calhoun yawned again.

"Now there's nothing to be done for a day or two," he said wearily, "and
I'm beginning to understand why people sleep all they can, on Dara. It's
one way not to feel hungry."

Maril said tensely;

"You're going back? After they took the ship from you?"

"The job's not finished," he explained. "Not even the famine's ended,
and the famine's a second-order effect. If there were no such thing as a
blueskin, there'd be no famine. Food could be traded for. We've got to
do something to make sure there are no more famines."

She looked at him oddly.

"It would be desirable," she said with irony. "But you can't do it."

"Not today, no," he admitted. Then he said longingly, "I'm about to
catch up on some sleep."

Maril rose and went into the other cabin. He settled down into the chair
and fell instantly asleep.

* * * * *

For very many ship-hours, then, there was no action or activity or
happening of any imaginable consequence in the Med Ship. Very, very far
away, light-years distant and light years apart, four shiploads of grain
hurtled toward the famine-stricken planet of blueskins. Each great ship
had a single semi-skilled blueskin for pilot and crew. Thousands of
millions of suns blazed with violence appropriate to their stellar types
in